KI-7 Fuliu - Returning Current

Fu means return or re-establish, and Liu means flow or current. With no current returning, drought would follow and the sea would overflow. Harmony needs a going out and a coming back; in a person, with no return, body, mind and spirit grow rigid. Every fluid has to go back to its source, and the mind must be free flowing. As a Metal point, it enriches and imparts quality. It brings back the energy we have depleted or lost touch with; it is fundamentally there, but feels as though it has gone. Like a tide coming in, it gives the ability to complete things and to return into oneself. Metal within Water is very Yin, a deeper, quiet and pristine water, so the person can reach the spirit again and be filled and reassured, and can go with the flow when frozen or stuck. It also means coming back to one's true quality: returning to the core, the essence, the source, and completing a cycle. It tonifies Kidney Yin and Yang so the primordial Qi stays strong, the fires of the Ming Men are kindled, and Heaven's energy is not used up by mundane influences.

Ensures our trust and faith in life's eternal nature.

• Not to be needled from the 8th month of pregnancy onward

Location: On the inner lower leg, behind flexor digitorum longus, 3 ACI above the level of the medial malleolus prominence.
Needle depth: 4 fen
Moxa: 3-7 cones

• When there is rigidity in Water, or too little structure, so the will never reaches its goal
• To strengthen the will and support the person in overcoming their fear
• When energy has been depleted or lost touch with
• When the mind is not free flowing
• When fear, suspicion or paranoid thoughts are contaminating the Water, and the person cannot stop and relax

• Metal point, River point and Tonification point of the Kidney
• Part of the Husband-Wife sequence
• Linked with I Ching hexagram 24: returning to the essential nature of ourselves, overcoming and moving forward, refreshing
• As the Tonification point it links child to mother to nourish and build up Water
• In Daoist numerology seven stands for both the loss and the return of our original nature. The point carries the movement from the I Ching's Splitting Apart to The Return: Yang reappearing within the deepest Yin, the renewal of Water at the winter solstice
• Of particular importance in clearing a Husband-Wife imbalance
• There are two kinds of return: returning to the root in life, re-establishing the bond between Metal and Water, or, when that bond breaks beyond what therapy can restore, returning to the Dao at death. Even then this point can help the patient's consciousness of their original nature, so destiny may be fulfilled and the passage from life to death eased. This inner tradition of healing cares for the person's evolution, not merely their survival
• An old saying: dying is our virtue going home; the ancients called the dead those who have gone back, which makes the living travelers, and the traveler who forgets to go back has mistaken where home is
• The name points to its role in regulating the currents and outflows of the body
• Below this point the channel loops around behind the inner ankle (KI-3 to KI-6); from KI-7 the Qi takes up its straight path up the leg again, hence the name